We Need Telephones That Block All Calls

GARY STEIN

Southern Bell is again giving all of you telephone lovers out there a chance to become even more neurotic about your beloved phones.

In previous years, of course, we were offered the chance to get incredibly important phone services like Speed Calling 30, which sounds like something you do with hogs at the Davie Rodeo.

It wasn`t bad enough that we have turned into a society that can`t -- or won`t -- get away from phones, even when we are in the shower or playing golf or driving our cars or seated in an airplane.

Ah, but now we get the phone company flaunting all its new technology while introducing the telephone services of the `90s, all of which can be available in South Florida this fall to make you even more of a phone wacko.

So, coming this fall, you too can have -- for several bucks a month each -- the advantages of services like Preferred Call Forwarding and Call Selector and Call Block and Call Trace.

While some of the new services are supposed to help block calls, which is a truly refreshing idea, I have always thought the world would be a better place if we had fewer phone services to interrupt our lives, since 95 percent of the calls we get are calls we don`t want to get.

Apparently, we have no such luck.

SERVICES WE COULD USE

Phone nuts are all around us, and new services are what the phone company insists on selling.

That being the case, I am still waiting for the phone company to offer services that are really more in tune with the `90s kind of person.

Such as:

-- Call Sometime, But Not While Cliff is Pursuing Nina -- An incredible service, this automatically blocks all phone calls between 12:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. to the homes of all you folks who enjoy being brain-dead while watching soap operas.

-- Call Back in 20 or 30 Years -- Perhaps the most necessary of phone services in South Florida, this service automatically spews forth all sorts of taped deterrents and excuses when you get a phone call from some long-lost friend up North who says he wants to bring the family down to stay with you for about four weeks.

(``We`d love to have you, as long as you don`t mind sleeping in the same room with our six pit bulls. And trust me, those little cuties don`t bite as often as people would have you believe.

(``We`re thrilled to have you, and we`re sure our Johnny will be over his communicable disease when you get here.

(``We`re so glad you`re coming to visit. We still have dozens of dusty, heavy boxes we haven`t unpacked from our move, and we have furniture to move, so we sure could use the help.``)

-- Call Gullible -- A true phone service for our times, this service blocks any calls you might be attempting to make to an 800 number of a pleading, weeping television evangelist.

DON`T BOTHER ME NOW

-- Block Call Yup -- This service allows you to block any call from anybody in a car phone. Trust me, nobody who calls you from a car phone has anything important to say.

-- Call Waiting and Waiting -- The service you have all been waiting for, no pun intended, this allows you to go about your daily chores while the phone dials an airline, and stays on hold for half an hour until a real human answers. If you call the cable company, the phone stays on hold until someone answers or your next birthday, whichever comes first.

-- Call if You Want to Make My Day, Bozo -- A personal favorite of mine, this service automatically redials any phone solicitor -- at dinnertime -- and plays a tape of Sam Kinison screaming obscenities into his ears.